"School executives could have viewed the pull-out of the third-party creditors as a warning sign that lending without regard to repayment caused significant harm to their students," reads the report by the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy group that works with low-income populations.

How did the "deske," the "bureau-plat," the "secretary," those magnificent pieces of furniture that inspired Chippendale and Hepplewhite—the leather, bronze and marquetry surfaces that underscored treaties and rearranged continents—become "computer tables" with pull-out drawers for keyboards?

"The foreign selling appears to be a pull-out of short-term players who had entered South Korea's stock market" in anticipation that Korean shares would benefit from Japan's March 11 earthquake, said Taurus Investment & Securities fund manager Lee Kyung-su.

There are many in Iraq who are far from convinced; the Sons of Iraq leadership, the chief of the Iraqi military and even Saddam Hussein's most loyal deputy, Tariq Aziz, who said Obama would leave Iraq to the wolves if he continued the pull-out.